[Dysprosium]

Imgur is already bloated. As for reddit, I'm curious about what makes you think they're drifting towards bloating. They use JavaScript (replying to a comment creates a new textarea), AJAX (posting a comment), WebSockets (real-time updates of comment timestamps), modals (sign up), but they do this in a very moderate way and the result is really robust. It seems to me that they perfectly know the power of all these technologies but have a very strong QA which doesn't let a single shit get pushed in prod.

[jasonsync]

More of a prediction at this point ... that $50 million in VC has been pushing them towards possible bloat. Not so much on the tech side, but on the advertising and monetization side.

Perhaps the recent resignations have something to do with a pushback against that? Internal bloat will eventually show itself!

[scrollaway]

> WebSockets (real-time updates of comment timestamps)

What are you talking about?

[Qwertious]

>scrollaway 9 hours ago | parent | flag

If I leave this up for an hour without refreshing, I'll get:

>scrollaway 10 hours ago | parent | flag

Again, without ever refreshing the page.

[function_seven]

Can't that be done purely in the client? Why use WebSockets to to remote math?

[scrollaway]

It can be done with a few lines of javascript. You certainly don't need to contact the server to ask them how long ago a certain time was.